Euro 2016 and the forgotten victims of Saint-Denis

Euro 2016 and the forgotten victims of Saint-Denis

Spectators wait on the pitch during the International Friendly game between France and Germany at Stade de France on November 13, 2015 in Paris, France. The game was halted following an explosion in the stadium and attacks across Paris claiming the lives of at least 118 people.
Photograph: Catherine Steenkeste/Getty Images

The European Championship starts on Friday in Saint-Denis, a fragile area where the inhabitants are still scarred by last November’s terrorist attacks but hopeful the tournament can mark a new beginning

Main image:
Spectators wait on the pitch during the International Friendly game between France and Germany at Stade de France on November 13, 2015 in Paris, France. The game was halted following an explosion in the stadium and attacks across Paris claiming the lives of at least 118 people.
Photograph: Catherine Steenkeste/Getty Images

The scarring might normally go unnoticed, but Aca Pavlovic knows where to look. He shuffles over to a lamppost on the corner of Impasse de la Cokerie and twists aside an advertisement for wholesale paint supplies to expose the damage beneath. The bite marks could have been chiselled out, so deep are they cut into the metal, with whole chunks gouged from the frame. Some are instantly recognisable as the impressions of nuts and bolts. Elsewhere the blemishes are more rounded and sharp to the touch, the result of ball-bearings tearing into the post.

Pavlovic has twice been back to the Stade de France but, as he runs his fingers over the pitted surface, delicately tracing the indentations, emotion spasms across his face. He has not cried here before, but the memories are raw. “Look at that, look at what it did to the lamppost, and imagine what it did to us,” he says, his muttered stream of consciousness competing with the rumble of mid-afternoon motorway traffic on the nearby A86. “People had been evacuated from McDonald’s, lots of people. But he followed us across the road. He had chosen us as his victims. And this is where he detonated his bomb ... No. I don’t want to look at this any more.”

It takes time for him to regain his composure, but he has a story he wants to tell. Pavlovic is one of the forgotten victims of the terrorist atrocities of 13 November 2015, the deadliest on French soil since the second world war. The focus tends to be drawn towards the Bataclan theatre or the café terraces of the 10th and 11th arrondissements in central Paris, where 129 of the night’s 130 victims lost their lives. But his tale is also significant, not least because the target of that evening’s first wave of attacks – so often dismissed as a botched job in the context of events elsewhere – had been the Stade de France.

The venue will host seven matches at the European Championship, including the opening fixture between France and Romania next Friday. It is the stage where Aimé Jacquet’s multi‑ethnic lineup, inspired by Zinédine Zidane and Marcel Desailly, Lilian Thuram and Didier Deschamps, claimed the World Cup in 1998. That team were emblematic of a newfound French unity, a spirit of “Black‑Blanc‑Beur” (blacks, whites and Arabs). Regardless whether that facade of social harmony has subsequently been exposed as a deception, not least in the aftermath of Eric Cantona’s comments to the Guardian last week, this is where Deschamps’s current Bleus aspire to hoist the European trophy on 10 July.

And yet it is also where one person was killed, and Pavlovic and 53 others seriously wounded, when three suicide bombers blew themselves up in the shadow of the arena while the national team, with the president François Hollande among a crowd of 79,000, were defeating Germany in a friendly a little under seven months ago. This is a nation dismayed that French nationals had been among the ranks of militants who had killed their compatriots. The events of that Friday night ensure France host their third European Championship under a state of emergency, declared by the government in November but extended to cover the tournament.

They will implement the biggest security operation for a sporting event in the nation’s history over the next month, acutely aware that investigators have since questioned whether the attacks at Brussels airport and on the city’s Métro system, which killed 32 people in March, had originally been intended for Euro 2016. The theory is that the Franco-Belgian terror cell had been panicked into acting early following the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the last surviving Paris attacker. Concerns over security will be a recurring theme at the finals, but France needs this tournament to be a success.

The authorities have consoled themselves that a greater tragedy was averted at the Stade de France. At least one of the three terrorists had been turned away that night because he did not possess a ticket, his attempts to blag entry dismissed by the attentive security staff. Salim Toorabally, on his first shift for Maine Sécurité, remembered blocking a man’s passage at Gate L around 40 minutes before kick-off. At 9.20pm the unidentified terrorist detonated his vest outside Gate D, killing himself and a bystander, Manuel Colaço Dias. The retired bus driver, a huge Sporting fan originally from Mértola in Portugal, had been persuaded to take some clients to the match. “He was not even supposed to be there,” his son, Michael Dias, said. With the local authorities overwhelmed, the Portuguese government contacted the family the following morning to confirm Manuel had been killed.

The second bomb exploded outside Gate H at 9.30pm – the signage at the entrance remains pockmarked – with footage of the game showing a startled Patrice Evra wincing as the boom reverberated around the arena. Hollande was immediately moved to a more secure location. The president liaised with the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the four representatives of his own government present, including Patrick Kanner, the minister for cities, youth and sports. With the first reports filtering through of shootings in Paris, the decision was taken for the head of state to return to the interior ministry at Place Beauvau while the other politicians remained at the stadium.

There were people who lost limbs, who were gravely hurt, whose lives will never be the same.

“We knew the game should finish to avoid a panic, so we stayed in our seats in the front row, stoically, to maintain a visible presence,” Kanner said. There were negotiations with TF1, the host broadcaster, which agreed no mention of the attacks would be made on air and, towards the end, an announcement informed spectators the gates along one side of the arena were out of use for technical reasons. With news of events in the capital spreading, the crowd delivered a defiant chorus of La Marseillaise as they departed. “But the security measures worked,” the minister said. “It is incredible the bombers did not have tickets but, regardless, they would not have got through the body searches at the gates.”

Pavlovic and his wife, Ljiljana, had been selling scarves outside the arena prior to kick-off but, despite having tickets for the match, ambled down towards McDonald’s where they had parked in Impasse de la Cokerie, a drab cul de sac between characterless office blocks, to meet his cousin and her husband. They had assumed the two explosions were firecrackers, only to be alarmed by the sudden number of policemen mobilising in the streets. “My wife had changed her mind about going to the game by then, so I was trying to find someone to take the tickets in ‘McDo’, only for two armed officers to barge past us. They were trying to arrest someone on the second floor, so they cleared the building. When we came out there were two girls ushering everyone together, the customers and staff from the restaurant, on to the street corner opposite.”

It is Pavlovic’s theory, one he acknowledges was not reflected in the official inquiry into the attacks, that the two young women were accomplices attempting to funnel people into a tighter area while Bilal Hadfi, a 20-year-old French national, watched on from a few yards away. “He was just down there, next to the junction for the motorway,” said Pavlovic, pointing a few yards beyond the restaurant towards the slip road. “Lots of people remember seeing him. He seemed to be reflecting on everything, waiting for things to fall into place so he could kill as many people as possible. But instead of going into McDonald’s, he was faced with everyone pouring on to the pavement because the police had evacuated us.

“We weren’t sure what we were going to do so we broke away from the crowd and crossed the road towards our car. My wife sat down on the bags I’d been carrying, my cousin and her husband were stood by their car, and I turned to light a cigarette. We were only there briefly, but he had followed us over. I don’t know why. If he had blown himself up in the crowd there would have been more victims, far more damage. But he’d crossed over towards the business park, stood right next to me and detonated his bomb. If I had been facing him full-on, I would not be here now.”

At 9.53pm, 30 ball-bearings, nuts and bolts ripped through the right side of Pavlovic’s body, 11 piercing his face and exposing his skull and 14 lodging in his leg. His torso was cut open, gashed deep to the navel, and the index finger of his right hand torn off. He remembers a blast of wind rather than a deafening noise – he will never recover the hearing in his right ear – and recalls a brief period of calm which ended when he attempted to pick himself up, rising unsteadily to see Hadfi’s severed head at his injured cousin’s feet. He realised he was drenched, but had no idea why, as a policeman urged him back down on to the pavement. The pain came later. All he could do was call out desperately for his wife.

She had been less fortunate. A piece of shrapnel had embedded itself into the back of her head, damaging the brain. In the chaos which followed she was rushed to the university hospital at Pitié Salpêtrière on the other side of Paris where she would lie in a coma for six weeks. The Pavlovic family, unaware of her fate and assisted by the Serbian embassy, spent three days traipsing from hospitals to morgues searching for her, reporting back to Aca as he recovered from his own surgeries at l’hôpital de Kremlin‑Bicêtre. His wife, heavily bandaged after brain surgery, was identified only the following Monday when Pavlovic’s aunt recognised one of her earrings. She is paralysed down one side, unable to talk, but can now “walk maybe five or 10 metres with a stick”. Initially it was feared she would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Even that hint of progress is considered a positive.

Neither Pavlovic nor his wife was insured, the initial compensation package of around €25,000 (£19,300) hardly sufficient in the long term. Just as deflating was the sense that those who had been affected by the attacks in central Paris had somehow “been considered more important”. The 49-year-old, like others injured outside the Stade de France, was not invited to the ceremony conducted at Les Invalides on 27 November to pay tribute to those killed or hurt in the atrocities. The government, led by Kanner, has since apologised for that oversight.

“But, unfortunately, the French people don’t know what really happened to us all,” Pavlovic said. “We weren’t seen as the real victims of the attacks, but there were people who lost limbs, who were gravely hurt, whose lives will never be the same. My poor wife ... and it isn’t just a physical injury. It’s much more serious. My body can recover, but my head and mind still hurt. I’ve come back to the stadium twice before today, to the friendly game against Russia [in March] and to sell scarves to raise money for the victims, and I’ve not cried before, but there is no ‘normal life’ any more. The terrorists attack our bodies, maybe even damage our hopes, and they must not win. But it is hard.”

A football for Euro 2016 in the indoor market in the city centre. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

The sense of trauma is shared by a whole city. France’s summer tournament does not begin and end in Paris. The host city for the curtain‑raiser and finale is actually Saint-Denis, barely six miles from the centre of the capital. The Stade de France was erected in the 1990s outside the Boulevard Périphérique, the Parisian ring road, on land to the south of the Dionysian town at La Plaine, once an industrial area linked to Île de France by the canal Saint‑Denis. The construction of that waterway was commissioned by Napoléon Bonaparte. This summer its quayside will be transformed into a gallery for street art celebrating Euro 2016.

The area is of huge historical significance. The city’s basilica, its tower still overlooking the football stadium, was originally built on the site of a Gallo-Roman cemetery but is now in glorious Gothic guise. The cathedral has been a royal necropolis since the sixth century where 43 kings and 32 queens are interred. Next door, in parkland, lies the grand Maison d’Éducation de la Légion d’Honneur, a prestigious boarding school for daughters of those awarded France’s highest order for military and civil merits. The city’s fanzone will be staged in the grounds of the Lycée, with hours restricted so pupils taking their baccalauréat exams are not disturbed.

The whole setting is a throwback to an elitist era. And yet across Place Victor-Hugo, a sleepy square flanked by the town hall, the mouth of Rue de la République offers a glimpse into a different world: the hustle and bustle of everyday Saint-Denis. This is a very modern melting pot, counting 135 nationalities among its 118,000 residents. It was traditionally a hub of migration from Brittany and Italy but, more recently, has welcomed people from north and west Africa, eastern Europe, China, the world. The city’s vibrant indoor market sees spice sellers from Morocco flogging their wares next to dressmakers from India. Local farm produce is peddled alongside stalls selling hijabs, the veils displayed on rows of mannequin heads. Those leaving services at the basilica mix with worshippers from the Tawhid mosque on Rue de la Boulangerie. Such diversity used to be celebrated, but the events of last November scarred this city. These days it is synonymous with something more sinister.

Violence revisited Saint-Denis at 4.20am on Wednesday 18 November. A force of 110 heavily armed officers, led by the elite tactical unit Recherche, Assistance, Intervention, Dissuasion (Raid), launched an assault on a third‑storey flat at 8 rue Corbillon, a few doors down from a primary school and a 15-minute walk from the Stade de France. The squat was occupied by the ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, his cousin Hasna Aïtboulahcen and another gunman from the terraces, Chakib Akrouh. Aïtboulahcen was heard shouting at officers at 6.15am, the exchange followed by a loud blast from inside the flat which collapsed the third floor. Debris, including parts of a human spine, fell from the window. By the time the operation was declared over, at 11.37am, all three occupants of the flat were dead, along with a police dog called Diesel.

Officials insisted later that their force had fired more than 5,000 rounds during the operation after encountering strong resistance, including heavy Kalashnikov fire. Yet investigative journalists from France 2’s Envoyé Spécial have since broadcast evidence to suggest those in the flat had been armed with only a Browning handgun – no other firearms were ever recovered – and had all almost certainly died when Akrouh detonated a suicide vest after Aïtboulahcen’s exchange with officers. The Raid teams were still discharging their weapons more than two hours later with the programme concluding that, given the officers’ protective shields were riddled with bullet holes on the inside, they had actually been firing on each other.

The Parc de la Legion D’Honneur which will be transformed into Saint-Denis’ official Euro 2016 fanzone Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

The potential heavy handedness of the police operation was discovered late and, by then, the vacuum had been filled with criticisms of Saint-Denis. The siege had focused the world’s attention on a city which, the allegations went, had harboured a terrorist. That was simplistic and failed to take into account the slum landlord problems which had facilitated Abaaoud finding shelter but, in a country seeking scapegoats, it stuck. “The initial attacks had been a huge shock, but that second wave weakened us further,” said the Communist mayor, Didier Paillard, who had been on the police cordon at 4.30am that morning. “People suggested we had become a school for terrorism, despite the fact Abaaoud had spent a matter of hours in our city. No one knew him. He was not one of us.”

“Regardless of religious or cultural origins we were always Dionysian first, so the attacks brought us to our knees,” said Bally Bagayoko, the deputy mayor and a practising Muslim. “What we had considered our strength – our diversity – suddenly felt our biggest weakness because Abaaoud could blend in. But maybe we should also consider the possibility, as politically incorrect as it is, that Saint-Denis’s diversity had a positive effect on the terrorist’s mind back at the Stade de France. [Hadfi] could have chosen to kill more people outside the ground. He could have killed people at the RER station next to the stadium. But, in the end, he chose if not to isolate himself entirely, then certainly to move away from the crowd. Perhaps there was an element of compassion which saw us avoid a further 200, 300, 400 deaths. The media are not considering that, though, because it would be seen as an apology for terrorism.”

Pavlovic and the 14 others injured outside McDonald’s would reject that out of hand, but Bagayoko’s comments reflected the uncertainty within a Muslim community struggling to comprehend the violent actions of a handful of extremists. Saint-Denis has needed a defence mechanism. Media outlets from the magazine Marianne to Le Figaro last month have pointed to creeping Islamist propaganda in an immigrant-dense city dubbed “Molenbeek-sur-Seine”, a reference to the area of Brussels considered a breeding ground for the terrorists who carried out the attacks in France and Belgium. Opportunists on the political right seized their chance. Éric Ciotti, a right-wing MP in Nicolas Sarkozy’s Les Républicains party, took to national radio asking “are you still in France” in a town where 40% of the population is thought to be Muslim. Paillard expressed dismay at those comments in an open letter, inviting Ciotti to visit and judge for himself. Had he taken up the offer? “No.”

People move towards radicalism in religion because they feel society is more and more unfair

This is not a town hall blind to the area’s issues. The wider Seine-Saint-Denis area, “le 93”, is recognised as one of the poorer banlieues and has its estates where violent crime and drug problems are rife. Its main town is saddled with 23.7% unemployment, more than twice the national rate, with the major companies who have moved in around the Stade de France tending to bring workforces with them. Average income is half that on Île de France a few miles away. Bagayoko bemoaned decades of austerity cuts and a lack of teachers which, with 45% of Dionysians under 30, has left a generation in the wilderness. “People move towards radicalism in religion because they feel society is more and more unfair,” he said. “They cling to something spiritual.”

No one from Saint-Denis is known for sure to have joined Isis – albeit interior ministry figures suggest that, out of 156 deaths in the ranks of French jihadists, 30 came from Seine-Saint-Denis – but recruitment remains a fear. Kanner, as minister for cities, warned publicly that a disaffected population in the country’s poorer suburbs could be exploited by militants. “I mentioned neighbourhoods in France which have certain similarities to Molenbeek and that, if we did not act, it could lead to what has happened there,” he said.

“Molenbeek has a lot of poverty and little integration between the Muslim community and the rest. Predators have arrived seeking to prey on young people. In France around 10,000 youngsters have been ‘radicalised’: not a lot but, at the same time, far too many. Around 2,000 have left for Syria and Iraq. It’s a limited phenomenon, but it still creates fear.

Teenage girls of Racing Club de Saint-Denis women’s football club playing behind the Stade Auguste Delaune Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

“We have fragile neighbourhoods we need to strengthen. Sport can certainly be an antidote because it is, in principle, about tolerance, values, unity ... all the things you need to fight radicalisation.”

The hope in Saint-Denis, expressed from mosques to marketplace, is that Euro 2016 can help the healing process, that the tournament being played on its doorstep can unite this diverse but embattled community. Certainly there is a thrilled sense of anticipation, with football recognised as a means of galvanising a generation. “We have 1,000 registered players, of all ages, and sport is at the heart of their community,” said Mourad Aïteur, the president of the football wing of Saint-Denis Union Sports. “The Euros are an international event which will leave a positive mark. I grew up in Saint-Denis. It’s a poor town with lots of immigration, but football is an integral part of everyday life.”

There is a track record of Ligue 1 talent nurtured on the streets here. SDUS can point to Jérôme Roussillon, a France junior international now at Montpellier, and Toulouse’s Wissam Ben Yedder as graduates, while Moussa Koita’s nomadic career began at the club’s Stade Auguste Delaune. “The talent here is raw and playing on every street,” said the Franco‑Senegalese striker, 33, who has played professionally from Belgium to Bulgaria and is now back at SDUS where it all began. “It is showcased in local tournaments, like those [the former France and Milan midfielder] Ibrahim Ba used to put on here. The World Cup in 1998 helped this town evolve: more facilities and pitches, better infrastructure. The same could happen this summer. But it also helps integration, community. Kids with little else going for them in their lives can escape through football. It gives them a sense of purpose.”

The local women’s club, Racing Club de Saint-Denis, shares Stade Auguste Delaune, offering girls from six to seniors a route into sport. They have already benefited from a new Uefa‑funded all‑weather pitch, opened by Paillard in April. “We have 24 different nationalities on our books, and the club is stronger for it,” said the youth team coach, José Alexandrine. “The Euros will inspire young people to play football. It will create enthusiasm and motivate them to become active. Football is a distraction, but it can often lead to bigger and better things. It’s difficult to forget what happened in November, and the scars on the town are still there, but the matches at the Stade de France will help people feel comfortable again.”

Reminders are never far away

That will only be achieved if the tournament passes without incident, and the scale of the security operation is unprecedented. The country, so intent upon securing the 2024 Olympic Games, is braced for an invasion from across the continent with almost half the 2.5m tickets for the 10 venues bought by foreign visitors. “You cannot imagine what that means, to have the trust of our neighbours at this difficult moment,” Kanner said. “We did not have a single incident at the Six Nations rugby, the [football] friendly against Russia, or the Paris marathon which saw 50,000 runners on the streets. That gives us huge confidence.

“Yes, France needs a successful tournament because that blue jersey will be the symbol of our youth. I’m convinced that, just as in 1998 with ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’, we will mobilise behind Les Bleus, especially with good results. And I hope in poorer neighbourhoods, where youngsters sometimes wonder what the Republic is doing for them, this can be a month of celebration and strength.”

The last European Championship was watched by a global television audience of 8.1bn people. Euro 2016, with an increased number of 24 teams and 51 matches over 31 days, will expect to trump that.

The hope is it will be a carnival. Each of the host cities is providing a fanzone, capacities varying from 10,000 in Saint‑Denis to 100,000 at the Tour Eiffel. Around 7m people will visit the zones, watching matches on big screens, with each host city responsible for security. The government subsidy aimed at easing costs was doubled to €24m after the November attacks, with drones overhead to monitor crowds as part of a heavy police surveillance operation, body searches at entry points and one private security agent for every 100 visitors. “The message is that, in a fanzone, you will be secure,” Kanner said. “There will also be more armed police, more soldiers, more gendarmes in the streets, but I want to tell the Guardian that everything will be done for security. We won’t forget what happened, because Daesh exists, but every proviso has been taken.”

Uefa has drafted in up to 15,000 security staff for more than 110 sites, with at least 120,000 police and soldiers to be mobilised. This is a population who have grown used to seeing combat troops in their red berets protecting key sights, whether synagogues or schools, since Opération Sentinelle was launched after the massacre at Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. Hollande increased the military presence to 10,000 troops after the November attacks. The authorities have simulated chemical and bacteriological attacks at venues such as the stadiums in Saint-Etienne and Lille, at the fanzone to be held in Bordeaux’s Place des Quinconces and in the southern city of Nîmes. Every attempt has been made to be ready.